gramvaani | community-powered-technology2016-08-26T08:53:12Zhttp://www.gramvaani.org/?feed=atomWordPressadminhttp://www.gramvaani.org/?p=26912016-08-26T08:53:12Z2016-08-26T08:53:12ZICTs for development have evolved through several stages. The very first stage in the mid-2000s was marked with hyped optimism that merely provisioning technology could work wonders by democratizing communication. However, the late 2000s forced a reality check with the realizations that many other aspects including user incentives and motivations, training, technology adoption, communitization of technology, stakeholder networking, and institutional responsiveness were fundamental ingredients for technology to realize its potential.

Gram Vaani was born in the midst of these realizations in 2009, and has evolved considerably over the years by embodying a comprehensive ICTs for development strategy, complete with community mobilization, content, and institutional linkages, in addition to the core backbone of using appropriate technology to drive change. Our new avatar, OnionDev, born through a strategic partnership with OnMobile’s Life Impacting Services business, captures this accurately through our name – that a multi-layered approach is needed for development, and that unpeeling the layers of the onion is not easy at all!

The infographic below chalks out our approach more clearly, and brings out the unique competency of OnionDev.

Most ICTs for development initiatives rely on sourcing a “technology vendor” to build the ICT component. However, this often results in a context gap because the technology vendor may not understand the development world or the project implementation constraints on the ground. Further, ICTs often tend to be designed with just the programmatic objective in mind, forgetting that the “users” are actually people who have varied interests and tastes, and need to draw excitement through interactivity and other engaging means to use new technology platforms that the development practitioners might be pushing towards them. Finally, very often projects are implemented by engaging local NGOs who understand the local conditions, but management feedback loops between the local NGOs and the administering NGO are not strong and the implementation is not tight enough.

Our strategy is the exact opposite. We are not a technology vendor, we are implementing our own Mobile Vaani program which has pre-built and tried-and-tested technology, content processes, field intervention, and institutional linkages. We understand what makes our users tick and what excitement is missing in their lives, which we can leverage to have them engage with our platforms. We understand our implementation geographies, and can further help guide our partners in using our technology in other geographies where we might not be present. Together with strong partners who bring in the appropriate domain expertise, we therefore feel that we can implement extremely strong development interventions, especially in the geographies where we are already working. The technology backbone on which our platforms and processes are built, additionally offers many opportunities for drawing causal inferences from observational data on how awareness and behavior change happens, barriers to change, and building up social accountability, community building, and collective action processes.

]]>0adminhttp://www.gramvaani.org/?p=26832016-08-26T04:21:01Z2016-08-26T04:21:01ZWe are very proud that the GSMA has published a case study and blog about our work. This reinforces our vision of using the mass reach created by Mobile Vaani to build a marketplace of life impacting value added services that can be offered through the platform. We are in the process of releasing a few such services to help students prepare for competitive exams, to be more effective entrepreneurs, and to create a sharing economy at the local village level.
]]>0adminhttp://www.gramvaani.org/?p=26612016-07-12T06:14:56Z2016-07-12T06:14:56ZEver since the Companies Act, 2013, which mandates medium and large companies to contribute 2 percent of their profits towards corporate social responsibility (CSR), the corporations’ engagement of CSR has been evolving. In order to maximise the overall impact on society as well as stakeholders, it is important for any corporate to put in place an effective CSR strategy and a regular monitoring and evaluation structure. According a study in 2015, around 50% of the companies score low on CSR efficiency of which half of the companies spend as much as the ones that scored the best. Direct and effective engagement with the stakeholders and a concurrent feedback channel could increase the efficiency of CSR projects.

This is where Mobile Vaani can play a role. The IVR (interactive voice response) system allows people to call into a number and leave a message about their community, or listen to messages left by others and hence, this works like a social media platform for rural areas. The voice and community media tools we have developed can complement an on-ground developmental intervention in multiple layers. It can enable concurrent monitoring and evaluation like capturing community participation in health or education programs and data collection while at the same time go beyond a data collection solution to a horizontal communication layer and reinforce messages. Taking this platform to the CSR landscape, Mobile Vaani can act in two ways, as a horizontal layer complementing the existing CSR project and as a developmental intervention in itself.

In an on-ground intervention program in health, education, women empowerment, financial inclusion, agriculture, etc., Mobile Vaani can complement in awareness and behavioural change communication, grievances, feedback and measurability. The IVR system enables reinforcement of messages with more frequent engagements and leads to greater contextual relevance through self-expression. Structured and unstructured data collection through voice surveys, user comments, etc. provides insights on program operations. Degree of participation and two-way feedback provides a channel for concurrent monitoring and evaluation of programs.

Consider a typical CSR project in healthcare which focuses on medical outreach to rural villages. Such a project would require to work on awareness, diagnosis and cure. Adding a communication layer of the Mobile Vaani will complement the entire project by creating awareness and reinforcing it, by giving real time feedback and easy management of a large scale project and in monitoring the project.

Mobile Vaani can also be a standalone developmental intervention project. The platform has proved to create impact at individual, community and institutional levels. The impact has been observed and measured in three ways, namely awareness, behaviour change and collective action. The instances of individual impact include people becoming aware of new facts, the awareness leading to behaviour change and individuals initiating discussions among neighbours and friends. Stories of corrupt headmaster publicly apologising, youth initiating door-to-door campaign against early marriage, etc. are examples of community level interventions. Mobile Vaani is also used actively as a grievance reporting system for government schemes. Government departments rectifying implementation process after complaints on Mobile Vaani is a frequent story.

]]>0adminhttp://www.gramvaani.org/?p=26492016-03-10T18:07:58Z2016-03-10T18:07:58ZAs India steps into its 70th year of Independence, a large section of the country’s population still remains unbanked. This malaise of inefficient financial inclusion has led generations of financial instability and pauperism among the lower income group who do not have access to financial products and services.

Most initiatives of providing no frills financial services and micro credit schemes found it tough to penetrate into the rural public. The unfavourable factors of illiteracy and misconceptions very much obstruct their access to the types of formal financial services delivered by regulated financial institutions.

The rural population’s expectations from financial institutions are simple. As quoted by the current RBI governor Mr.Raghuram Rajan, they are –“a safe place to save, a reliable way to send and receive money, a quick way to borrow in times of need or to escape the clutches of the money lender, easy to understand life and health insurance and an avenue to engage in savings for the old age.” Since 2005 various initiatives have been put forth jointly by the reserve bank of India and the governments which came into power.

All efforts by the banks and the government in the forms of various financial schemes find it tough to gather confidence among the uneducated rural class. This can only be tackled via proper passage of information and an independent body to help them with their queries and doubts.

Micro Save – a consultancy firm initiated by Bill and Melinda gates foundation working on the issues of financial inclusion partnered with OnionDev Technologies to run a voice based campaign on financial inclusion. The campaign titled “Bachat, Bima Aur Pension Ki Jaankari – Ab Aapki Haqdaari” which translates into information on savings, insurance and pension –your right. Graamvaani’s Interactive Voice Response System (IVRS) for communication “Mobilevaani” proved once again its effectiveness to reach out into the rural public.

THE CAMPAIGN

The objective of campaign under DFII (“Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation) initiative of Micro Save is to impart easy to understand information on matters like banking, accidental insurance and financial welfare schemes. The campaign also aimed at addressing the larger issue of financial inclusion. The key target audience for the campaign included people in two pilot districts of Jharkhand i.e. Ranchi and Bokaro. .This weekly campaign aired through Mobilevaani consisted of 11 episodes- seven story based episodes to impart information and messages and four other episodes which answered to the queries raised by the listeners.

METHODOLOGY

The campaign had to be well structured to achieve its full potential and the team started off with a pre campaign survey to collect demographic details of the potential listeners. It assessed the awareness level of people about various insurance schemes and banking facilities. Then came the comprehensive content plan which had the key messages to be shared with the people.

The seven episodes had a storyline which draws inspiration from the stories of community in target areas. These stories were collected by the community mobilisers of OnionDev. The information in these episodes is provided by raising the problem and sharing solutions of the same through their real experiences in flashback and incidents that take place in the current scenario.

A dedicated team took care of campaigns promotional activities by releasing eight promo episodes. These were played throughout the week on both Bokaro and Ranchi Mobile Vaani platforms and dedicated phone numbers for the campaign. Oniondev’s community engagement volunteers were trained on the different aspects of the campaign on the two MV platforms. To spread the campaign information they conducted weekly community meetings and also helped community members by taking them to the Bank Mitras.

The eleven episode campaign generated a total of 3659 unique callers. The engagement of female callers were quite encouraging. Most of the callers in Ranchi and Bokaro shared their views and opinion on the campaign in interview format. Men and women jointly talked to contribute the 13 percent of total responses.

Community contributions could be seen in the following categories –

Comparing saving at home with the benefits of having a saving account in a bank

Benefits of having a bank account and availing services under PMJDY

Importance of accidental insurance specially PMSBY and availing the facilities under this scheme

Importance of Life insurance specially PMJJBY and availing the facilities under this scheme

Impact of the campaign in form of people opened a bank account, applied for insurance schemes or spread financial literacy information in their community.

CONCLUSION

Electronic money might be a huge ask as the majority of people were not aware about the services provided by a bank apart from the transaction facility. They depend on paper cash for their daily needs and in emergencies they depend on the people around them. The campaign gave big insights into hassle free account opening procedures and about the provisions under PMJDY. Their understanding of the term insurance was that of life insurance policies and many callers were not aware about a scheme related to accidents.

The campaign with its focus on banking and insurance schemes spread a good amount of information in the communities residing in Ranchi and Bokaro districts of Jharkhand. People’s participation in the campaign showed their interest in knowing more about financial inclusion which is evident through the queries received on the platform and community took it forward with discussing about other financial schemes also. Spreading awareness and answering community’s questions relating to the benefits of saving at bank, accidental insurance and life insurance was covered nicely but the grievances like uncooperative attitude of bank officials reported by community also need to be addressed. Campaign went beyond awareness and information dissemination, addressing queries of people on banking and insurance. This is important for such a campaign as it inspires action at listeners’ end. Reserve Bank of India’s vision for 2020 is to open nearly 600 million new customer accounts and service them through a variety of channels by leveraging on IT. However, illiteracy, low income savings and lack of bank branches in rural areas continue to be a roadblock to financial inclusion in many states and there are inadequate legal and financial structures. A large scale implementation of such campaigns by Micro Save can help a lot when it comes to educating the rural public about the government’s efforts.

]]>0adminhttp://www.gramvaani.org/?p=26312016-03-10T18:07:44Z2016-03-10T18:07:44ZThe increased connectivity and technology penetration in India have opened up newer rural and urban markets for the businesses to tap into. The role of advertising becomes paramount for any business venture to reach out to these consumers and capture the market share. According to some statistics1, the Indian companies are estimated to be spending a whopping Rs.57,000 crore in 2016 for advertising. Spending in digital marketing is growing the fastest and around 10% of the ad spending was devoted to it in the concluded year. Radio is also showing a revival and the spending curve for radio ads is predicted to grow upwards.

The Mobile Vaani platform, with its 1,00,000 users in Jharkhand and its equally strong presence in Madhya Pradesh, Bihar, Odisha, Uttar Pradesh and many other states of India, stands to contest with the radio and digital media as an advertising platform. The low cost low-end equipment requirement, high mobile penetration, large rural audience and unique accessibility are some of the factors that make MV a different breed of media. It offers a combination of features provided by two of those media platforms from the two ends of the spectrum, radio and digital media.

Google ads and YouTube non-skippable ads are the most typical examples of digital media advertising. Google ads’ click-through rates are around 0.1%, i.e. only 1 click out of 1000 times when the ad is placed next to some search results. On Mobile Vaani, typical click-through rates are 7-8%, or say 5% to be on the conservative side. This is because on MV the person is actually listening to the ad, unlike on Google where most people just ignore the ads. Thus, MV ads can be argued to be 50 times more effective than Google ads. Typical cost per impression for Google ads is around Rs 6 while we price our ad impressions at Rs 2.5. In YouTube, the impression is assured like on Mobile Vaani, and ads are priced at a cost per view of Rs 6-10.For a radio that broadcasts to a population of 5 lakhs, the cost for advertising will be around Rs. 1500 for a 30s ad spot with 5 repeats daily. But, a 40% listenership and a mere 10% tune-in at a time, the number of daily impressions come down to around 20,000. The cost per user, then, becomes Rs. 2.6.

Unlike radio, Mobile Vaani customers can avail auditable data about the listeners including demographic and contact details. It also has the unique facility to custom the ad campaigns and tailor make it to regional and timely requirements. Also, while on the internet users pay their telecom provider to watch the ad; it is free for the users to access MV.

]]>0adminhttp://www.gramvaani.org/?p=26432016-03-10T18:07:22Z2016-03-10T18:07:22ZIn the 2014 General Elections, 7577 male contestants stood for elections and 481 of them got elected. The number of female contestants in comparison to men was astonishingly low at 668 and the female contests elected were a mere 62. This, in a country that guaranteed universal adult franchise from the very first election and had been going to the polls at regular intervals for more than 65 years now, is worrying and points towards the abysmal condition of a vast majority of women in India. Despite the constitutional guarantees and safeguards neither women have been able to exercise their fundamental rights in true sense nor has this impacted a significant socio, economic political change.

The case is no different in Jharkhand. Meri Panchayat Meri Shakti Mujhe Bhi Gino was an initiative to foster women participation in the political decision making at the grassroots. CREA in association with Oniondev envisaged a campaign encouraging women’s entry into the village public arena in Jharkhand. As an organisation nurturing female leadership, CREA found convergence with Oniondev’s vision of a bottom up approach of empowering communities through technology. In view of four phase Jharkhand Panchayat elections from November 22 to December 12, 2015, the campaign kick started to advance women’s participation in the state’s rural local self-government.

The blue print of the campaign envisioned a number of objectives based on which the campaign was fleshed out. The seven week campaign utilised some key campaign tools such as information content in the form of audio drama, monologue, expert interview and panel discussion, user generated content, community mobilisation in the field and surveys to gauge the impact.

A quantitative and qualitative analysis of the campaign reflects a positive outcome. Community members in large numbers not only got hooked on the informative content but also responded by recording User Generated Content in various formats. This was reflective of their high engagement with the programme. The campaign brought to fore a number of inspiring case studies and powerful personal narratives of elected women representatives. They became a source of inspiration for the women striving to break hegemony of men and carving a niche for themselves.

]]>0adminhttp://www.gramvaani.org/?p=25952015-10-05T17:47:01Z2015-10-05T17:47:01ZIndia has the highest number of maternal deaths in the world, an estimated 44,000 deaths every year. Despite 75% decline in the Maternal Mortality Ratio in India between 1990 and 2015, the maternal health crisis is far from over. Another equally severe but less talked about issue is maternity morbidity which includes all conditions attributed or aggravated by pregnancy and child birth. Different studies estimate that for every maternal death, there are at least 20 to 100 women living with maternal morbidity. The fact that the majority of these conditions can be prevented by providing adequate and timely health care is even more saddening.

Alongside medical reasons, limited awareness about provisions and practices, limited or poor access to health care systems, the root causes of ill-health of women in India lie in the low social status accorded to women. Another reason for this dire condition is the high proportion of girls who get married at a young age. Maternal deaths related to pregnancy and childbirth is an important component of mortality for girls aged 15–19 worldwide. Spacing and number of pregnancies, inadequate nutrition and lack of access to quality health care are some other causes for the high maternal mortality rate. Knowledge about and access to medical care facilities, play a critical role in ensuring safe pregnancy and delivery.

With this context in mind Oxfam India wanted to engage rural communities in discussing some of the above mentioned issues associated to Maternal Health and the campaign was executed in the states of Jharkhand, Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Odisha, Uttarakhand and Uttar Pradesh through Mobile Vaani network of three Community Radio Stations and four Mobile Vaani numbers. This campaign was aimed not only at providing information to the listeners about maternal health, but also to initiate a discussion among them and seek their opinion on the issue.

The campaign was spread over a time span of eight weeks and as per the content plan, the first and the last weeks were dedicated to conduct surveys to understand the prevailing awareness and perceptions about issues related to maternal health and assess any change in the behaviour of the respondents by the end of the campaign. The remaining six weeks in between the surveys were utilized to provide information to and elicit responses from the callers. The four episodes were in drama format for better user engagement and induce behavioural change.

Community radio stations (CRS) are relatively young members of the mass media community of India. In a multi-linguistic, multi-cultural and multi-religious country like India, community radios stations which serve geographic communities can be an effective mechanism that can reach out to rural villages cut-off from the main stream media. Since 2008, when the first community-based radio station licensed to an NGO was launched, several stations run by educational institutions and non-governmental organisations have set up stations. 179 CRSs currently operate in the country among which most are run by educational institutions and others by non-governmental organisations. In the last seven years, these community radios have had an impact in health and sanitation, education, food habits and family system and hence, have led to a significant change in the lives of the urban and rural population.

With the advent of community radios, the efforts of toppling the top-down approach of the radio broadcasting in India has advanced to the next level. Previously the listeners did not have any choice but to listen to the centralised programmes broadcasted by the mainframe radio which did not cater to any of their specific needs. But with community radio, the listeners are able to hear programmes in their local language, about their local customs and social practices and discussions on specific issues faced by their communities.

Even when this is true, to evolve into an entirely bottom-up structure, community radios should encourage more user engagement and participation, take active feedback in real time and be continuously in contact with the users. Only this can lead to an ideal situation where the people are listening to what they really want to hear, especially in the current scenario where only well-established educational institutions and NGOs are given license to operate community radios.

Gram Vaani has been working to improve technology for community radio and build a sustainable model for the CR stations since its inception. One of our foremost technology solutions for running community stations is the GRINS (Gramin Radio Inter-Networking System) which allows program scheduling and play-out, full telephony and SMS integration, internet streaming, content management and statistical analysis of play-out history. As the most popular low-cost radio management solution, it touches 2.5 million listeners in over 6 countries. There are over 25 community radio (CR) stations in India running GRINS. This interactive community radio prove to have produced significant awareness and empowerment improvements through the several public information campaigns run across communities on the Gram Vaani-CR Network. More recently, in our pertinent attempt to multiply the effectiveness of CR stations, we implemented another project for community radio using our vAutomate suite of IVR voice applications.

The objective of the project was to train and build the capacity of stations to use a community radio specific analytics solution built on vAutomate. Some of the applications that are included in the suite are vFeedback where stations can upload snippets of their radio programs on the IVR and ask their listeners to call and give feedback, vDemography where stations can collect demographic information about listeners through and vOutreach where stations can track the phone numbers of the listeners calling in the vFeedback system. The vFeedback can be used to solicit feedback from community members on the CR programming which can be both, qualitative feedback where members can record comments, or it can be quantitative surveys designed as a collection of multiple choice questions. The vDemography supports tools for collection of demography details about the listeners, such as age, location and profession. Using vOutreach, stations can then call out to these listeners and use this capability to either send periodic updates about station activity or send reminders about programs or even collect demographic information by connecting the call to vDemography system.

The data collected from these applications can be used to understand community perceptions about their programs, popularity of the programs and listenership base (location, demography) of different programs. It can also be used to build marketing material to apply for grants and local advertising. Since this technology allows callers to leave messages, listen to messages, and other exciting features such as vote on messages, etc, it can be accommodated as a listener engagement tool that CR stations can use in their programming to build a deeper connect with their communities.

Gram Vaani selected and trained 5 CR stations, Ujjas Radio (Gujarat), Kumaon Vaani (Uttarakhand), Radio Brahmaputra (Assam), Apna Radio (Delhi), and Henvalvani (Uttarakhand), on using its IVR solution. The project activity which had three phases involved training of the CR stations on how vAutomate technologies work and how they can be employed in their stations, using the vFeedback system in studying its statistics and making conscious choices about the parts of the vAutomate system they wished to use and using vOutreach and vDemography system to call out to listeners of the stations and collect demographic and listenership information. The project has successfully demonstrated the value it can provide to CR stations and has also brought to the front the need to continue supporting CR stations to build more capable champions of marginalized communities in India. The insights from the project are described in the infographic.

]]>0adminhttp://www.gramvaani.org/?p=25472015-09-29T09:15:12Z2015-09-29T09:15:12ZMeet our heroes who are creating an impact everyday in their community through Mobile Vaani. These are the citizen journalists from Mobile Vaani media clubs who have been collecting stories from the rural marginalized community they belong to, and making it heard by the world. Their stories have led to great changes in the community and that is how they are causing ripples around Jharkhand, Bihar and Madhya Pradesh.

Media Clubs

Media clubs exist at the block head quarters of the blocks we are operating and it is a dedicated association where volunteers from the community sit together , discuss the issues and decide the developmental priorities of the community and share these priorities using the simple mobile phone to the outer world or the concerned citizens. The club members record community news, grievances, issues and cultural artifacts on club channel and Mobile Vaani.

Our Stories

Corrupt Headmaster Owns Up His Mistake

Dashrath Mahto is from Gram Panchayat Shankardih, Dumri Block, Giridih district in Jharkhand. He recorded a message on JMV about a school headmaster mentally harassing the school students. The headmaster of High school, Galagi was charging Rs. 10/ – per student for issuing the admit card of matric students. When a few students refused to pay the amount, the headmaster threatened to fail them in the practical exams by giving them less marks. After the message got published on Jharkhand Moblie Vaani (JMV), it spread like wildfire in the area. Everyone got to know about the tactics of the headmaster. So the headmaster called a meeting of the parents and guardians in school and owned up his mistake. He further promised not to repeat such mistakes in future and also appealed to the students to write the exam without worrying about all this.

Electricity Bills Without Connection

T.M. Brahmasri is from Madhubani district of Bihar and an active member of the Mobile vaani media club in Madhubani. He said that a village near Madhubani was getting regular electricity bills without any electric connection. The report was published in MV and also forwarded to the authorities. Soon the authorities discontinued the bills and promised to look into the matter.

Missing Paycheck Issue Resolved

Kumkum Sadai from Khutauna Madhubani working in the MNREGA Horticultural Department voiced a complaint on MV saying that despite working regularly at his job he had not received a paycheck for the last two years. Though he tried to follow up with various officials including the district magistrate, none of them responded to his requests for payment but rather asked him to take the matter up with the village headman (mukhya). Unfortunately the village headman said that his money was being taken by the BEO (Block Employment Officer) and there was nothing that could be done about it. Hearing this story MV sent a letter to the MNREGA Horticultural Department. As a result of this letter and follow up phone calls by MV’s Community Manager, Kumkum Sadai received his missing paychecks. The entire process between voicing the grievance and the issue being resolved took two months.

Receives Prompt Aid in Malaria Affected Village

Om Prakash from Palmua Jharkand reported three malaria deaths in one week due in his village. He blamed lack of awareness of these issues by health agencies as the cause of these deaths. When the concerned authorities got to know about this issue, a mobile ambulance was immediately dispatched, with fumigation equipment and first aid. The caller Om Prakash called back to submit a follow up report thanking Mobile Samachar Sewa for providing them with this kind of a platform and the health authorities who responded promptly to aid the ailing mothers, children and poor people of the village.

Fight for Migrant Rights

Ganesh, the only earning member of his family had travelled from his village in Giridih district in Jharkand to Delhi to work as a cook and died under unnatural circumstances while in Delhi. His family were worried about what would happen to them now and wondering why they had not been able to receive any benefits from the government. A friend of the family recorded this story and sent it on MV. Volunteers at Gram Vaani sent letters describing the story along with an audio clip of the report recorded over the network to the Labour Commission. Following this the Indian Labor Commission sent a letter to local offices ordering them to thoroughly investigate this case. Upon investigation it was found that that since Ganesh was an unregistered migrant his family could not legally avail of any compensation. However, due to public interest in the case the BDO (Block Divisional Officer) took matters into his own hands and provided ration cards to the family and waived the college tuition fees for Ganesh’s son. The story does not end with Ganesh – after his story was aired hundreds of similar tales began being appearing on MV. Almost all of them were about unregistered migrants who commented on the lack of facilities in their local panchayats (village councils) to complete registration before leaving as migrants. So MV volunteers took matters into their own hands and reached out to the Labour Department again prompting a drive to train people at the panchayat centres to register migrants. Volunteers at MV announced the dates of these trainings over our networks to make sure people knew that now they could hold the system accountable and demand migrant rights.

Tube well Installed for Drinking Water

Farkeshwar Mahto from Kherabera village, Topchanchi Block, Dhanbad in Jharkand said that there was a lot of problem with availability of drinking water. People used to get their drinking water from open drains. People repeatedly asked the government to set up a tube well but these demands were not met. Farkeshwar even approached Prabhat Khabar (Jharkhand’s local newspaper with largest circulation in the state) but they did not carry his item. However when he left his item on JMV, it got published and simultaneously JMV forwarded the item to Panchayatnama (JMV’s local media partner and Prabhat Khabar’s fortnightly magazine) as a result of which an article was published on this issue and the matter got highlighted. The authorities responsible for installation of tube well installed it without any further delay.

Trees Planted on Roadside

Farkeshwar Mahto also gave a report about planting trees on the road between Ghorati village and Cheta village in Dhanbad district after which the DFO Satish Chandra Rai initiated the planting of 1200 hybrid trees on both sides of the road in the 5 km stretch between the villages.

Anganwadi Gets New Building

Wasida Khatun from Ranchi district of Jharkhand shared the information in JMV that the anganwadi in her village was operating in a rickety kacha building which possessed great risk to the students. Soon after the situation came into the limelight, the authorities shifted the anganwadi to a new concrete building.

]]>0adminhttp://www.gramvaani.org/?p=25362015-09-29T09:14:54Z2015-09-29T09:14:54ZIf only every problem in this world gets connected to the right solution at the right time, there wouldn’t have been so many unresolved problems existing in the world. In this time, where we are at the apogee of technological advancement, it is reasonable to believe that somewhere someone has already figured out some solution for your problem. So, from simple household hassles to issues of large scale, our first instinct is to turn to the Internet for help.

But in India, this will be true only for the 18% of the population who access internet and for the rest of the people, it is not as simple as pressing few buttons. Illiteracy, poverty and lack of infrastructure further accretes the barrier that stop the several million rural population from reaching out to the amassment of information. Well aware of this fact, Gram vaani has made it its mission to be the internet and the social media to these people and bring information to their fingertips. We are being their browsers, bringing them solutions; be it awareness campaigns, ads or discussion forums.

One such instance is our Sunking solar lamp ad campaign for Green Light Planet. As we connected the solar energy solution providers to the rural audience, we were also connecting a mass plagued by irregular power supply to their solution that can significantly impact their lives.